It was a strong run for the Long Island native, Joey Braun, who made his second career start with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour this past weekend at Riverhead Raceway.
Braun previously made a start on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in May of 2025 at North Wilkesboro, racing for David Hill, and coming home with an eighth place finish.
Braun showed speed earlier in the day, topping the practice charts in final practice with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
In his second career start with the Tour, Braun had a strong run, making his way up to third at one point, but eventually fell back, coming home with a sixth place finish.
“I thought we had a better car than a sixth place car,” Braun said to Short Track Scene. “We were quick in practice and we rolled out on scuffs for our time trial session and the car didn’t fire off the way I thought it would. I never raced on that American acer tire. I only ran on M20s and 30s the one time last year when I ran the old Hoosier Tour tire at North Wilkesboro.”
Braun knew he had his work cut out for him, coming back to a bull-ring with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
“I thought it was a good race, these guys are extremely aggressive,” Braun said. “You had to use your car up a little bit to get to the front, and when I got to third. I thought the seas started to open up for us and thought we were going to finish there. Then the 51 and Craig Lutz, and I made a little contact with them earlier in the race and they got me back and we wound up finishing sixth, but it was all in all, a good night. It was a great show for our first time together running a tour show with this team and hopefully we got something to build on.”
Late in the race, the aggressiveness among the field was growing towards the end of the race, with drivers not shying away to use the bumper.
“The aggression level turned up a lot,” Braun said. “The bumps that they were giving really don’t give the drivers much of an out when you’re passing somebody and someone comes down and wants to try and chop you off or kill your run. You don’t have much of an exit in the corners if racing gets tight. I don’t know what everybody else was feeling, but I felt very on the edge the first few laps after a restart. It just took them a while to fire back off.”
Braun said he felt he had to be careful no matter what groove he was in.
“It’s just very slick on the bottom and they’re slick on the top,” Braun explained. “You can hang a right rear pretty easily and make a little contact and it just seems like if you rub these guys, they don’t take it too well and when push comes to shove, they get you back 10 times harder. Especially when you got back to like 40 to go in a race. I felt like I was getting hit or hitting somebody every lap, and it was still a ton of fun, and somehow the car wasn’t as beat up as I thought it was. I mean, the front bumper was still straight at the end of the night, so it couldn’t have been that bad.”
Over the last two seasons, Braun had been a regular with the SMART Modified Tour, but earlier this September, parted ways from the Ellis family owned 24 modified.
“My deal was to run full-time this year on the SMART Modified Tour and we weren’t getting the performance that I was getting last year with David Hill’s car,” Braun said. “The whole point of me leaving David Hill’s car after last year was to get better results. It wasn’t coming through, so we pulled the plug on that a couple weeks ago after Carteret County and switched our gears for this year to run this four car for the rest of the season and joined the Whelen Modified Tour for at least the Riverhead show and possibly Thompson, so we’re working on doing that.”
Braun was disappointed to step away from the Smart Tour, where expectations were higher for 2026.
“It’s been a rough year, kind of a rough go,” Braun said. “I haven’t had the greatest equipment down there the last two years and this opportunity came about and it’s a really good car, really good crew chief with Doug Ogiejko and a great owner with Rich Gerbe and hopefully we got something that we could build on and and hopefully I got a good home with the modified going into 2027.”
2026 marks the second season where Braun has been in tour-type modifieds, and he may become a regular in the Northeast next year, and potentially calling Riverhead his Saturday night home again in 2027.
The combination of Braun and Gerbe has already provided proof that it’s a winning formula, Braun the defending Islip 300 winner from 2025, and won earlier this July at Riverhead piloting the four machine.
“I never ran weekly tour-type modifieds at Riverhead,” Braun said. “I’ve only ran legend cars there weekly, and then I jumped from that to the SMART Modified Tour with David Hill last year, and ran again down there this year with AmeriFast and the 24 car. I’ve been in the modifieds for a little bit now, not a long time, but we put together a deal up here with Rich Gerbe and Highmark, and we’ve went out four or five times with the car and have won three major races with it, and now we’re really shifting our gears to just running this Highmark car. I’ve been bouncing back and forth the last couple of years, but I’ve really never had a weekly home with a modified.”
With his second Top-10 in just his second start with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, it is a confidence boost in the back half of the 2026 season.
“Last year when I ran the Whelen Modified Tour show with David Hill at North Wilkesboro, we finished 7th,” Braun said. “So far, two Tour starts and two Top-10 finishes. It’s good motivation knowing that I could go against the best of the best and have competitive runs. I’m not saying it’s going to be like that at every racetrack, especially places that I don’t know, but it’s definitely a really good confidence boost, that’s for sure.”
Braun is thankful to be back close to home and getting satisfactory results and building momentum heading into 2027.
“Special thanks to Rich Gerbe, Doug Ogiejko, and Highmark, all my crew guys that came out, my parents and everybody that supports me, Pops and G, they’ve done a lot for me in North Carolina and boosted my modified career and hopefully we got a good home and we keep it going and get some good results in the future,” a grateful Braun said.
Joey Braun and the Rich Gerbe owned Highmark Modified tentatively plan to make the trip to Thompson Speedway for World Series weekend, as the curtain comes down on the 2026 season for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
